Peninsula High senior Scott Phillips will be one of the first in the region to receive an ‘artificial pancreas’ after the device was approved by the FDA in September. Scott has had Type I Diabetes since he was a child, and the device helps people like him live their lives without having to worry about checking glucose levels as often.

The pump, developed by medical technology company Medtronic, has been dubbed by some an ‘artificial pancreas’ because of its ability to monitor a patient’s blood sugar and automatically adjust the amount of insulin it administers in response to an increase or decrease in glucose levels.

Sitting on the bleachers at Peninsula High School, a lacrosse helmet and stick beside him, Scott Phillips glances at fingers scarred from nearly six years of daily blood sugar tests.

Phillips was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 12 years old, and the day-to-day ordeal of managing Type 1 diabetes have been at the back of his mind ever since, he said. Now, he’s one of the first recipients of a new type of insulin pump that doctors say could be a huge step forward for diabetics managing disease.

Peace of mind

The pump, developed by medical technology company Medtronic, has been dubbed by some an “artificial pancreas” because of its ability to monitor a patient’s blood sugar and automatically adjust the amount of insulin it administers in response to an increase or decrease in glucose levels.

The system doesn’t function exactly like a normal pancreas — users still have to monitor their blood sugar regularly and give additional insulin before meals. But for people with Type 1 diabetes, whose pancreases have stopped producing insulin that the body uses to process sugar from foods, it’s an improvement over other available options.

“There’s not ever anything I thought, ‘Oh, I can’t do that because I have diabetes,’ ” Phillips said. “But (the system) definitely makes those things that I want to do that may be more challenging for someone who’s diabetic, it would probably make them a lot easier.”

Phillips has never been one to let his diabetes slow him down, says his mother, Cheryl, but that doesn’t change the fact that it takes an enormous amount of thought to stay on top of a lengthy list of variables that can change blood sugar from one day to the next.

“You can never just say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to deal with this,’ ever,” she said. “There’s so many variables. You can eat the same thing every day, do the same amount of exercise and one day your numbers are perfect, and you do that same thing the next day and all of a sudden you’re sky high or you’re really low,” she said.

More flexibility

Cynthia Muñoz, a pediatric psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles who specializes in pediatric insulin-treated diabetes, compared the process of keeping blood glucose levels in a certain range to asking someone to consciously regulate the speed of their heartbeat.

“The person is manually calibrating, manually managing a bodily function within a certain range, and I don’t know if people really understand what that can be like,” she said. “It’s like a person manually trying to make their heart beat at a certain number of beats per minute.”

And for people walking that medical tightrope, the Medtronic pump could be a godsend, said Kevin Kaiserman, Phillips’ physician. For one, it grants diabetics wider flexibility in dealing with the day-to-day management of their diabetes. Before he received the device, Phillips checked his blood sugar about six times a day, he said. Now he tests half as often.

“It decreases the burden of care,” Kaiserman said. “There’s a lot of serious consequences that can happen from diabetes, and anything we can do to improve overall control really will help.”

‘Added burden’

Some previous pumps could react to a user’s blood sugar spiking, Kaiserman said, and administer necessary insulin to combat the jump. When their blood sugar dropped, however, those devices would simply shut off, leaving the person at risk of their glucose level dropping dangerously low.

“This system can actually improve your overall control by reducing both your high and low glucose values by bringing you more to the middle,” Kaiserman said.

That’s an added benefit for Phillips, who will head to Rhode Island this fall to play Division I lacrosse in college. In addition to the day-to-day challenges faced by those with diabetes, athletes with Type 1 have another level of issues to consider, Kaiserman said.

“You have this added burden that you’re wondering how your blood sugar is going to be during the game, before the game, after the game, and these are constant decisions that the athlete is making,” Kaiserman said. “Now, with this system they still have some work to do, but the work is reduced.”

Despite his diagnosis, Phillips said he’s found no reason to curtail his activities or hold himself back from a normal life.

“(Doctors) obviously told me to take it easy with sports, and that they didn’t know if I’d ever live up to my full potential playing sports, but I didn’t let that get in the way, and I didn’t really listen to them,” he said.

Better management

The Medtronic system pairs an insulin pump with a sensor that keeps tabs on Phillips’ blood sugar levels. Every five minutes, the sensor sends that information to the pump, which distributes varying levels of insulin based on how high or low his blood sugar is at the time.

That process keeps his basal, or background, insulin in check, but he still has to administer an additional dose of insulin, called a bolus, to account for spikes in blood sugar from meals.

Phillips said he’s never had a problem testing his glucose levels or administering insulin in public, but that’s not the case for many with diabetes, Muñoz said.

“There are some people who prefer not to manage their diabetes publicly, and so, unfortunately, sometimes a person will forgo checking blood glucose levels or giving themselves their insulin because it will mean having to find a place where they can do that and feel comfortable,” she said.

For those people, the Medtronic system could be a step toward improved blood sugar management regardless of social settings, she said.

‘It doesn’t stop’

Relying on the pump during the day is far more convenient than past systems for adjusting to blood sugar levels, but it’s a critical function at night, Kaiserman said. Normally, people with diabetes have to wake up during the night to check their glucose levels and administer insulin if they need it.

That’s not always easy for an 18-year-old, though. And the consequences for a diabetic sleeping through a potential drop or spike in blood sugar can be life-threatening, Muñoz said.

Phillips, an acknowledged heavy sleeper not fond of alarm clocks, said he relies on his mother to check on him while he sleeps. If she found his blood sugar too low, she would use a straw in a cup of juice to tickle the inside of his cheek and he would drink, all without waking up.

“Usually, you don’t have to work at night, (but) with diabetes it doesn’t stop,” she said. “It goes 24 hours, and you don’t know if the exercise is going to make him go low four hours later when he’s asleep. So this is huge.”

‘In your face’

And while that works while he lives in his parents’ Rolling Hills Estates home, Phillips said he was worried about what he would do while he slept in his dorm room as a college freshman.

“I was kind of nervous going off to college being like, ‘Oh, like my roommate’s going to kill me because he’s going to keep having to wake me up instead of the alarms and stuff like that,’ but this system will take a lot of that out of going off to college,” he said.

Even without the Medtronic pump, Phillips had no plans to restrict himself, though.

“I’ve never looked at diabetes as something that would ever hold me back from doing something,” he said. “So, when people say, ‘Oh, you won’t be able to do this, or it will be way harder if you try to do this,’ honestly, when people say that, it just motivates me more to go and do that and just be like, ‘Ha, in your face.’ ”

Cynthia Washicko started covering the Palos Verdes Peninsula for the Daily Breeze in 2016. Before joining the Breeze she covered business and local news for papers on the Oregon and Washington coasts. She’s an Orange County native and Cal State Fullerton alum who enjoys traveling and has a particular knack for killing house plants. Restaurant recommendations and story tips are perpetually welcome.

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